False Witness (17 page)

J
USTINE AND
I
LEFT THE RESTAURANT TOGETHER, BUT
soon I was alone and in a taxi racing through Westminster. Big Ben struck once rather dolefully. I was not sure what time
it was, but it was late.

Penny would be hurt either way, whether I told her or Justine did. If I confessed, I would gain a little credit from Penny
and I might impress Justine. But that was too easy. Life was not that simple. I wondered whether Justine could be bluffing.
Maybe she was trying to provoke me into action? Maybe I could fake her out? But there was that look in her eye. The same look
as when she talked about potting some particular vile criminal, the look she had when she talked about Kingsley. She was not
bluffing—I had to confess.

Once home, I did not sneak up the stairs. If Penny woke up, I intended to have it out there and then. It was the honorable
thing to do. I almost felt righteous.

The bedroom door was slightly ajar. Along the corridor, I could hear Ginny tossing fitfully in her sleep and coughing, coughing
so painfully. My daughter was clearly unwell and I had been guzzling antipodean plonk with my mistress.

I took a tentative step into the bedroom. The floorboard groaned. Standing there, I could see that Penny had thrown off the
duvet and was lying completely naked in a fetal position. An icy blast of wind struck my left cheek, which was still blushing
with the wine. The window was wide open and the glass rattled in the frame.

Penny did not move but said, “Where have you been?”

“Out.”

“Really?”

Another rush of wind. I could feel my resolve shriveling. “Yes, really.”

“Anywhere in particular?”

“No. Nowhere in particular.”

“You’ve been out with Justine, haven’t you?”

This was the moment. How to broach the subject? Did I start gently and start discussing our problems? Or was it better to
tell her directly: The truth is, Justine and I are having an affair.

“Have you been out with Justine?” she repeated. “Tell me.”

“No,” I said. No? I felt thoroughly ashamed. How could I have said no?

“Tom, I just want the truth. Have you been out with Justine?”

Fortunately, I had another chance, it was not too late. I took a deep breath. “No,” I said more firmly.

Penny sprang upright and threw the pillow at me. “Liar,” she screamed. “I can smell her, you liar.” She was not crying. It
would somehow have been easier if she were. “Are you having an—”

“I don’t know.” I had retreated into my corner of the room and squatted on my pile of dirty laundry. “Really, I don’t.”

“It doesn’t surprise me. If a woman is after you, you’re an erection waiting to happen. You’re
so
pathetic.”

The last word was particularly hurtful but deserved. I simply waited for Penny to continue.

“I hope you’re more adventurous with your mistress than you are with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you only know two positions. Eyes open and eyes closed. It’s hardly the
Kama Sutra
, is it, Tom? Still, it had to happen really.” She drew two blue knees up to her chin, her head seeming to bounce on them
as she talked. “You didn’t have a prayer.”

“How did you know?” Like so many of my less successful crooks, I was more interested in how I was caught than in the terrible
consequences that follow discovery.

“The cigar smell for a start,” she said. “And I thought, Why would he lie about seeing Justine?”

“Pretty impressive.”

“Thanks.”

And suddenly we were being almost civil. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“I know,” she replied.

I slowly started undressing, neatly placing my suit on thick wooden hangers; my normal practice was to fling it over the back
of the chair. Penny drew the duvet up to her knees. I could only see her head, one side of which was lit by the moon.

“You’d better come to bed, I suppose,” she said.

Penny did not move as she began to speak, staring, always staring, through the gaping window as the winter air seeped into
the room. “There was a man—well, he was no more than a boy really—caused a bit of a scandal at school. Alex… Chapple, I think
it was. We all fancied him, I suppose. But he only had eyes for one person.”

“Justine?” I asked.

“Who else? He used to teach us—English, I think. Introduced us to John Donne and Marvell and all the Romantics. He got the
job because he knew Justine’s father, or something like that. No one really knew.”

“And what was Justine’s father like?” I asked.

“Well, she seemed to…”

“Love him?”

“Worship him.”

“That’s not really what I asked, Pen. What I meant was—”

“Put it this way,” she said, “what’s anyone like who sends single mothers to prison for shoplifting?”

“Doing his job?”

“And loving every second of it, Tom.”

I was still confused. What was the relevance of all this? Penny seemed to be building slowly, convincing herself before she
shared these memories with me.

“Tom,” she said, “this… this thing between you and Justine”—she tugged a little at the duvet and a jet of icy air sped up
my back, setting me on edge—“is it just a passing thing? An infatuation?”

“Penny, I swear… if I knew, I’d—”

“You see, Alex was—”

“Alex?” I asked, and then I remembered the earlier part of our conversation. “Oh,
Alex
.”

“He was the teacher. Good title for it. I suppose young girls can be tutored in all sorts of things. Alex… oh, was it Chapple?”

“Is it important?”

“No,” Penny said.

“I asked Justine about him but she just told me to mind my own business.”

“What a surprise,” Penny said. “You see, Alex
seemed
shy, innocent, supposedly unavailable. Of course, absolutely irresistible to a classful of girls. But it was all hushed up.”

I was no longer listening very carefully, for I wanted to tell her what I had decided, what was bound to hurt. “I’ll have
to go to the West Country for a couple of days,” I said. “For the case.”

“You’ll miss your daughter’s birthday.”

“I’ll be back by then.”

“Yes, it was Chapple,”she said confidently. “That was his name.”

Outside, the moonlight flickered as a cloud scudded across the garden trees, cloaking their upper branches in purple, then
gray.

“Justine was found in his study,” Penny said in a matter-of-fact way.

“Is that what you meant? Her old tricks? Leaving—”

“Leaving things in men’s studies?” Penny paused. “I suppose she left—”

“Her clothes?”

“Her cherry.”

“That’s terrible,” I said.

“Oh, don’t be such a prude. Everyone has to lose it sometime. It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“Just in
those
circumstances,” Penny said.

“The study?”

“Don’t be silly, Tom. There’s nothing wrong with being bonked on a desktop. We should try it sometime—except your desk is
always full of your bloody murder briefs.”

“Then what was so awful?” I asked.

“That night,” Penny said, her voice suddenly very distant. “It was…”

“Yes?”

“It was the night Justine’s father died.” Before I could say anything at all, Penny continued, “Chapple was sent away, naturally.
I’m not sure what happened after that. He disappeared. Some people say he stayed in the area but I never saw him again.”

I turned round to face her and noticed that the downy hair on her nape was standing on end. “Penny, did you hear me? I might
have to go—”

“If you go,” she said, “we won’t be here when you return.”

“Y
OUR CLIENT,” SAID
J
UDGE
H
ARDCASTLE, “DEMON
strates a refreshing amount of realism.” She fixed me with one of her eyes.

I was seated in Hilary Hardcastle’s chambers behind Court 4 with my prosecutor for the day, Rupert Livingstone. I was representing
Emmanuel “Whitey” Innocent. Whitey was a drugs dealer. He was also a grass. A good grass. A supergrass.

True informers are born and not made. For some people feel the desire to betray as others feel the need to tend to the sick,
or to teach children or to sit in dark confessionals and listen to the sins of others. But unlike doctors and teachers and
priests, informers held a special fascination for me, as I was always intrigued to see what would drive a man to betrayal.
It was, very often, surprisingly little.

“Perhaps you might like to read this, Judge,” I said to her as I passed over a sealed envelope.

“Any objection, Mr. Livingstone?” she asked.

He grunted reluctantly.

I did not know the exact contents of the letter. What I did know was that it was from Chief Superintendent William Heggarty
of the Flying Squad, and was a curriculum vitae of my client’s informing activities. As the judge slowly read the handwritten
note, I gazed around her chambers. They could not have been further removed from those of Ignatius Manly. Hardcastle had prints
of the guillotine, the gallows tree at Tyburn with gibbeted highwaymen hanging from chains, and a graphic portrayal of the
crushing of the Peterloos Riot with ranks of uniformed troopers attacking an unarmed crowd.

“These matters are always sensitive,” she finally said. “I suppose we must fight crime by any means necessary.” She looked
at the two barristers before her and said, “Do I take it that Mr.… is it Innocent?”

“It is, I said.

“Is he pleading guilty?”

“Yes, Judge,” I said. “I’m afraid he doesn’t live up to his name very often.”

On that day, even the obvious comment met with the approval of La Hardcastle. “He does have an extraordinary name,” she said.

“He does,” is all I replied.

In fact, Whitey was born in Trinidad but had lived most of his adult life in that netherworld between Lewisham and Cat-ford.
He never gave the police his correct address. Although ethnically Afro-Caribbean, he was an albino. The tight curls on his
head were snowy white and dusty from some skin complaint, his eyes were never more than half open, which is to say that they
were invariably half shut, and he was caused terrible pain by sunlight, shingles and telling the truth. Whitey was a pupil
of the Judas Iscariot school of trust and loyalty.

“I suppose,” continued Hardcastle, “I shall have to give him a very substantial reduction in his sentence, for his… assistance.”

Livingstone groaned again and looked at his impeccably manicured nails. He didn’t want to offer Whitey a deal, but he had
it forced upon him by the CPS, who in turn got the word from the Flying Squad.

“May I ask how important an informant Mr. Innocent is?” asked Hardcastle.

Rupert Livingstone, former young conservative and now a prematurely old and irritable one, consulted his brief. “I understand
he has provided Flying Squad with some intelligence about certain Jamaican armed robbers.”

Whitey had grassed up the Yardie Blaggers, to use Jamie Armstrong’s parlance. That was a dangerous business and I felt it
right that the judge understood the risks involved in such treachery.

“I understand, Judge,” I said, “that my client has provided more quality information than the next half-dozen informants put
together. And”—I paused to try to reinforce the point—“and two of those gentlemen have recently been exposed.”

“Oh dear,” said Hardcastle.

“And they were both murdered,” I added.

“Really?”

“Quite brutally, I understand.”

“I see,” said the judge.

Central Drugs Squad, who had arrested Whitey for dealing heroin, were also unhappy. They had to accept a plea to supply of
a little cannabis when the word came down from Flying Squad. Five years’ imprisonment had suddenly become nine months, and
with remission and remand time it was practically a walk-out.

Emmanuel Innocent had to be given his thirty pieces of silver.

As I put my wig back on, and headed for the corridor leading to the court, Hardcastle stopped me.

“Good news and bad news, Mr. Fawley,” she said.

“For whom, Judge?”

She ignored my comment. “Bad news is that my buggery has been taken out of my list for the next sitting. To give the defendant
a chance to think. I hope someone will knock some common sense into his head. I can’t stand sodomites.”

I looked at Hilary Hardcastle perching on a frugal chair, no cushions, no padding, when a shaft of light momentarily crept
through the clouds that had laid siege to St. Paul’s. She looked like a chameleon on a stone.

“And what is the good news?” I asked.

She turned her head a little toward the light and licked her lips quickly. “And the good news, Mr. Fawley, is that I’m available
to do the Kingsley murder.”

Rupert Livingstone’s mood improved for the first time that day. As we shut Hardcastle into her lair, he gave me his most patrician
of smiles.

“Another one for death row,” he said, running a manicured hand through his hair.